I Am Sequoia

A ray of sunlight finds its way to the forest floor where I was patiently waiting to bathe in its life giving glory. Day after day I would wait for that brief few minutes of nourishing light and with all my strength I would reach upward trying to grasp it. The light was not abundant on the forest floor but as I grew taller my daily sun bath grew longer. For a while I was afraid that some animal was going to eat me during the night, but the taller I grew the more confident I was that nothing could harm me. I am a mighty Sequoia Redwood. I have been standing tall on the north western coastline of North America for over half a millennium and this is my story.

I was fortunate, as a seed falling from my mother tree, to land in an ideal spot to germinate where the sunlight was able to penetrate the dense canopy above that was the needled branches of my relatives. The soil was rich, the air clean and fresh so I was able to grow tall and strong but I seemed to slow down well before I reached the heights of the others. And as the years passed and I took my place among the other trees I struggled to draw up enough water to nourish my highest branches. . But then I found a new source of replenishing water. Fog. The fog rolled in off the ocean most every day which I was able to absorb through my leaves and reach even further for the life giving sun.

We lived in harmony with the earth for hundreds of years, some for thousands. But then came a creature that did not know peace or harmony. These creatures murdered thousands of us. A once flourishing forest dwindled as they fell one tree after another and hauled the massive dying bodies away from where they stood for so long. These creatures made a terrible buzzing sound and before long another of my family slowly crashed to the ground making an equally terrible wood splitting sound and sometimes taking with them a smaller neighbor unluckily in the wrong place. The attack by the buzzing creatures seemed to be on the largest of us. This genocide lasted for decades upon decades. Massive holes in the canopy blotched the landscape with brown earth. Dignified lives literally cut short.

We had been accustomed to the occasional falling of a brother at the hands of humans but these humans were different. The humans of the past took only what they needed from the forest be it deer, raccoon, or tree and we all lived in a symbiotic balance with one another and they rarely if ever took one of the giants. Falling a few trees here and there does no harm to the forest, in fact it allows the suns light to reach the next generation and sprout new life. But if too many are taken from any species, plant or animal, in a short time span, that species may be lost to the world forever. In my life I have been witness to some forest creatures that are no longer here. Some were lost because they were unable to cope with the ever changing conditions of nature. Some were lost to man.

Just when we thought we were going to be the next species to be eradicated from the face of the earth we got and unlikely ally. Man. Not exactly like the ones from the past who respected us but it was obvious that they cared. These men did not dwell in the forest like the tribes of past times. They only came to our aid when the other men came to cut us down. They would stand between the cutters and the trees sometimes enduring great physical abuse to save us. They would climb high in our branches and stay for weeks or months because the other men would not cut down a tree if it meant killing another man. The cutters would occasionally beat our helpers but not kill them. The only things they killed were forest creatures and trees. Soon came the watchers. These were men who came to watch the battles between the cutters and the helpers. The watchers brought even more watchers, some sided with the cutters and some with the helpers. I think most of them wanted the cutters to stop and let us live as we have for so long. By the time the watchers and the helpers pushed back the cutters, though, the forest was in a state of devastation. The landscape was bare and ugly. With so many trees removed from the forest there were thousands of animals without homes. Some of the misplaced creatures would not survive for long without shelter because fewer trees also means less shade on the ground to protect the sensitive ones.

Fortunately for all of us that the men who are the cutters changed their ways. They still cut down trees but not as many as often. And now they also plant baby trees in place of the ones they cut down. The bare brown earth began to be replaced by green. So I find now that I am an elder in a very old forest filled with an abundance of young trees. I am the tallest and the oldest for miles. I watch over the forest and every year I drop my seeds to the ground and hope that they find a ray of life giving sunlight as I once did. In my youth I thought that I was invincible and nothing could harm me. I was a mighty Sequoia Redwood. Now I am a mighty, but humble, Redwood. I always knew that we are all vulnerable to Mother Nature but now I know that something as tiny a human being can devastate the whole planet. I only hope that the cutters of the world are balanced by the helpers.

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2 thoughts on “I Am Sequoia”

Enjoyed reading your post…Lovely words!!!
Deforestation is spreading like an epidemic. Giant trees that have taken 100s of years to grow are ravaged in a matter of minutes..Its like obliterating our natural heritage…The photograph is amazing and the tree is so huge…Even though the shot is taken from a distance I can still get a scale of its size….Thanks for sharing..